Monday, June 15, 2009

I know I'm a little late at getting to this, but as a blogger who cares very deeply about the future of pizza in New York, I should comment on Time Out's article on their top new pizza joints in the city.

I have not tried Co., Farinella or Anseimo's Coal-Fired Brick Oven Pizza.

But their other three choices were decent.

Keste Pizza & Vino is not bad -- but I do think it's more than a little overpriced. (And the "vino" part is outright false advertising. When I was there, they didn't have a liquor license. I assume they will soon.) But high prices aside, what I had -- the pizza with prosciutto and arugola -- was extremely delicious. The proscuitto and the mozzarella were extremely tasty, and they put on a nice forest of greens and while the crust wasn't quite as burnt as I like it, it was very good.

I liked Williamsburg's Motorino better. (Which I already blogged about.) But, then, when I went to Motorino, I went with friends and we tried a really wide variety of pizzas. (They were all pretty excellent -- as were the antipasti.)

The new surprise for me was Tonda -- which I really flipped over when I went there a couple of weeks ago.

I went to Tonda with a friend who keeps kosher, so we couldn't order anything with meat on it... but it still surpassed expectations. Their margherita was terrific (excellent cheese, excellent sauce, and just the right amount of char on the crust.) And the vegetarian pizza, which had tomato, mozzarella, mushroom, eggplant, zucchini and haricots verts was a terrific surprise. We also had a broccoli rabe calzone which was very respectable (not quite as good as Lucali's calzone, but what are you gonna do?) and the arancini (deep fried rice balls with a meat center) were nice and cheesy.

If I had been making this list, the two new places that I think are worthy of consideration that I recently visited: Luna Rossa on Court Street in Brooklyn. (I went with friends who didn't like it as much as I did, and my salsicce e friorelli pizza (sausage and broccoli) needed a bit more salt, but I thought it was very decent.)

My other one is also in Brooklyn on Atlantic Ave. (one of the few strips of Brooklyn that could really use a decent pizza place) La Pizzetta. I went there fairly recently with my family to celebrate the nuptials of my godfather. The appetizers were poor, but the pizzas were good.

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By the way, my fresser friends should expect food posts all week. There have been a couple of new (and old) restaurants I recently tried that I will be posting on.